


love would stay (a whole life through)

by LassieLowrider



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Age Difference, F/M, Female Harry Potter, Mutually Unrequited, Physical Disability, Sirius Black Fest 2020, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-07
Updated: 2020-11-07
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:08:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27437839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LassieLowrider/pseuds/LassieLowrider
Summary: Sirius is dead, but then he isn't. Heather is alone, but then she isn't. Or: Heather loves Sirius, who could never love her, and Sirius loves Heather, who could never love him.
Relationships: Sirius Black/Harry Potter
Comments: 4
Kudos: 74
Collections: Sirius Black Fest 2020





	love would stay (a whole life through)

**Author's Note:**

> **Prompt #:** 46, The Godwife  
>  **Content/Spoiler:** fem!Harry Potter, mutually unrequited love, physical disability  
>  **Notes:** Great heaping thanks to @JayPoash over on twitter for coming through and beta'ing this at supershort notice.  
>  **Summary:** Sirius is dead, but then he isn't. Heather is alone, but then she isn't. Or: Heather loves Sirius, who could never love her, and Sirius loves Heather, who could never love him.

Sirius laughed as he dodged Bellatrix’s spell, the laugh sticking in his throat as he stumbled, momentum carrying him backwards, throwing him off his feet and – into fog.

He looked around, seeing nothing but the milky white fog surrounding him.

“Heather? Remus?” he called, spinning on his heel. No response came from the fog around him. Sirius walked a bit, calling for  _ anyone _ ever so often, sinking to sit on the floor – the ground? The hard surface beneath him – when he felt he ought to be tired. He didn’t actually get tired, but the habit to rest was well ingrained. 

He wasn’t certain what, exactly, was going on – maybe some curse he’d never heard about, despite being raised a Black with all what that entailed. Having spent long enough walking the white, foggy expanse, however, Sirius didn’t much care about  _ how _ it had happened but was more stuck figuring out how to make it stop. 

After a long while – the fog left him no way to tell the passage of time, but many rest periods had passed – something pulled him away, the feeling reminiscent of a portkey, uncomfortable hook behind the navel included. 

When he arrived, for lack of a better word, it was to a washed-out forest. It was the first time in a long while that Sirius saw anything even remotely resembling colour, so he felt he wasn’t to blame for not noticing everything going on immediately. 

“Prongs?” he yelped, sounding like his animagus form – more than he was comfortable with, anyway – when he saw what unmistakeably was a very pale ghost of his best friend. 

“ _ Padfoot? _ ” James answered incredulously. The voice proved it to Sirius, it was his friend – or a very good simulacrum of him, at least.

“What in Merlin’s name is going on? You’re  _ dead _ !” 

“Yeah, sorry to break the news but it seems like you are too!”

It probably would have devolved into an epic argument, unlike any since the time James and Sirius couldn’t agree on if juice with pulp or juice without pulp was better – that one had taken place three days before that fateful Halloween – if a shaky voice hadn’t broken in.

“Sirius?” Heather said, voice wobbly.

“Pronglet!” he replied, “what’s going on?”

“I don’t- you’re not  _ dead _ , you can’t be!” she said, and while she had looked haggard before, now she looked positively distraught and on the verge of tears.

“We-ell…” Sirius drew out the syllable, rueing that he couldn’t hug her when she looked like she desperately needed one. “I’m not exactly alive, either, am I?”

He looked around, gaze catching on the rest of his company – James and Lily, both looking exactly like the day they died, Remus and little Dora, Remus looking more drawn than he ever had in life and Dora not as little anymore. 

“I thought – I thought you’d wake up, once all this was over. Now I’ve got – I don’t have anyone left now.” It didn’t sound like Heather was talking to anyone, more like she was having a breakdown where she stood. The Forbidden Forest probably wasn’t the best place for a breakdown, but Sirius had a feeling Heather didn’t exactly choose it.

“Well, I don’t know, but I know I haven’t seen you around upstairs, Padfoot,” James interjected, the unexpected voice seeming to jolt Heather from her panic. “For all I know, I’d say you’re not dead, just – displaced.”

A signal sounded through the trees before anyone could say anything more, and Heather looked at the treetops, and before she crossed her arms Sirius noticed her hands trembling.

“I don’t have time. I’m – Voldemort will spare the children and the school if I go to him.” Sirius’s gut reaction was to deny, try to stop her – going to Voldemort meant  _ death _ , that much he was certain of, and he wanted her to live. He had however been out of her life for two years, maybe dead, maybe just in a limbo unlike any he’d heard of, and he’d left her. Despite himself, knowing he wouldn’t be able to touch her, Sirius tried to hug her, attempting to comfort her.

She glanced over her shoulder at him, eyes filled with gratitude, maybe more appreciate of him not trying to stop her than the comfort offered in vain.

“Will you stay with me?” she asked, not looking at any of them.

“Always,” they said in unison, following her to what would be her death. 

Watching Heather let herself get hit with Voldemort’s killing curse was the most difficult thing Sirius had ever done. The moment the curse hit, James and Lily disappeared like smoke in the wind, Dora following soon after. Remus seemed to cling to the present by sheer force of will and caught Sirius’s eyes.

“You’re not dead, because you’d be disappearing too,” Remus said, voice heavy with strain. “Your body is in St. Mungo’s, fourth floor.” Before Sirius could reply, Remus was gone.

Sirius looked at his goddaughter’s body, and in the very moment he caught sight of her fingers twitching minutely, he found himself pulled away from the forest and back to the white foggy expanse. 

With only the fog for company, Sirius didn’t have anything but thinking to do, and inevitably his thoughts cycled back to what Remus had said.  _ Oh, if only I could go to St. Mungo’s! _ he thought, and suddenly the fog cleared to show the entrance to the hospital. 

He looked around, stunned to see London replace the fog, but was pulled out of his surprise when a woman, dressed head to toe in red, walked straight through him. He’d felt that even if she hadn’t, and that meant that maybe – maybe he wasn’t dead, after all. 

He saw an obvious wizard, horrendous muggle fashion and all, making his way to the hospital, and Sirius startled into motion, hurrying to catch up to him and sneak into the hospital that way.

It took a good while, but Sirius found the room designated as his, and if his entire noncorporeal being trembled when making his way through the door, well, at least no one could see him.

Sirius stood by his own bedside, watching his body. He was familiar with the term ‘out-of-body experience’, but he hadn’t taken it quite this literally before. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected when Remus told him, but he’d hoped that it would be enough, seeing his body in the hospital bed. 

Grateful that someone had left the chair pulled out, Sirius sat in what he knew to be an uncomfortable seat, resting his elbows on his knees. It was the first time in three years that he got to sit down in an actual chair, and he couldn’t even appreciate it.

“Well, this is just a fine situation I’m in, me,” he said to himself, leaning forward to pat his own shoulder. In the same moment he touched his body, everything went black.

For the first time in two years, Sirius Black’s body drew breath entirely on its own.

***

“It’s not that I don’t trust the healers, ‘Mione, but I don’t trust the healers. Take care of Teddy!” Heather said before turning on her heel and silently apparating away. She called out a greeting to Sarah, the Welcome Witch on duty, but she’d been coming in every day since the war ended, and quite often even before, and had long since been told that she needn’t sign in.

She headed for the elevator, a woman on a mission, ever thankful that here, at least, she wasn’t stopped by endless wellwishers or – and she shuddered to even think the word –  _ fans _ . She was pleased to see she had the elevator to herself, no matter how respectful people were she could still feel them looking, and today Heather wasn’t prepared to be approachable. 

It had been a year since Sirius had – not woken up, not exactly, but stopped depending on charms to keep him breathing. He wasn’t in a coma, the healers said, he was just sleeping, recuperating, and would wake up when he was good and ready to wake up. Until then, they’d just keep charming nutrition and regenerative potions into him.

That was the main reason she made sure to visit him, every day, just so that he’d hopefully not be alone when he woke up. Despite what she’d gone through in life, she was naïve enough to think that he wouldn’t wake up if she wasn’t there. Maybe it was nothing more than a child’s desperate clinging to fairytales, but she had precious little to cling to anymore.

Disembarking the elevator on the fourth floor it was a quick three steps to instead enter the private room given to Sirius – it was the one time she’d taken advantage of her very unwanted fame. 

Heather sank into the chair by Sirius’s bedside, rifling through her handbag and pulling out a tome that by no known laws of physics and space should have  _ fit _ before placing the bag on the floor. 

“Well,” she said and reached out to take Sirius’s hand in hers. “Time to continue with Gamp’s Law of Elemental Transfiguration, then.”

She’d gotten into the habit of reading out loud as, after a year of this, she didn’t have much to speak about, since most if not all developments were better suited to tell an aware audience.

“Gamp’s Law has five principal exceptions, the first of which…”

“…the first of which is that a wizard or witch cannot conjure or transfigure working magical foci.” She looked from her book at the first word, stunned speechless by the voice she so well recognized, despite not hearing it for so long. Heather stared, eyes wide, taking in the sight of grey eyes and a wan smile. “Hullo, Pronglet.”

Everything dissolved into chaos after that.

***

No matter how light and airy Heather had managed to make Grimmauld Place in the years since his accident, Sirius could still find the perfect shadowed corner or doorway to lurk in when he felt the need to brood and be dramatic.

She was in the kitchen, the formerly gloomy room painted a warm, cheery yellow accented with wood, charmed windows put in to allow sunshine even in the basement. 

Heather was stirring something in a pot on the stove, Teddy almost asleep on her hip and a displeased Kreacher hovering behind her. Perhaps that had been one of the biggest changes, that Kreacher had become not exactly kind, but grudgingly polite – unless you actually were Heather, who Kreacher adored.

Sirius watched them from the shadows, his own little family, odd and misshapen as it was, and had a creeping desperate feeling that this happiness he felt couldn’t possibly last. The headlines he’d caught a glimpse of, despite Heather’s best efforts to keep them hidden, only seemed to prove it to him.

_ ‘Crippled ex-convict takes advantage of Girl-Who-Won!’ _ the Prophet had blared, and having read the article Sirius was certain it wasn’t the first time an article in the rag painted him in a less than positive light. 

“Why do you insist on hiding these  _ rags _ , Heather?” he said grumpily, leaning heavily on his cane as he finally limped into the kitchen. She didn’t startle, even as she turned the heat down on the stove and turned to face him, back stiff and head held high. 

He’d once called her Lily, back when he was at his worst after Azkaban, but now he could never take her for anyone other than herself. The temper was Lily, the pride and honour James, all of it distilled into a woman with a backbone of steel and a temper of flint. 

Sirius loved Heather as he’d never loved anyone before, loved her like a godfather absolutely shouldn’t love his goddaughter – which was why he was determined to not let her ruin her life or put it on hold for him.

“Because I don’t put any stock in it, and I don’t see why you should be upset by that ridiculous woman,” Heather bit out, hiking Teddy higher on her hip and clutching him to her with both arms, a gentleness in her movements that belied the stubborn and angry set to her eyebrows.

“I don’t need protecting!” Sirius was well aware he sounded like an angsty teenager say it – had a feeling he’d heard Heather say those very words in that very tone back before his inopportune tumble through a curtain.

“You sound like me in fifth year, Sirius, you do know that?” she said, and had it been anyone else he would’ve called the tone mocking, but from her, it only sounded fond. “I just – I don’t think you’re taking advantage of me, I absolutely would  _ not _ call you a cripple, and considering how little family I’ve had for my entire life, well. I’m just happy I can help you.”

“I’m just – I’m burdening you, stopping you from living your life! You should be in the countryside, raising Teddy, not taking care of your crippled godfather.” James had once told Sirius that he never knew when to stop, which had received unanimous agreements from both Remus and Pettigrew. Sirius had started to realise that the statement had held a goodsized grain of truth because no matter what, he just kept on digging himself deeper into his own grave.

He wanted nothing more than to be selfish, accept her statement for what he hoped it was and leave it at that, but he felt he owed to both her and her parents to at least try to convince her she shouldn’t spend her life looking after him.

“You’re not a burden, Sirius. You’re my godfather, and every day I wake up so thankful you’re still alive and here to help me figure out my life and the world after the war. That you’re here and not leaving me to raise Teddy on my own – and Teddy will need to hear stories of his parents when he grows up, and I can’t give him that.” She shrugged, careful not to disturb the sleeping Teddy. Behind her, Kreacher stood, glaring balefully at Sirius for the first time since he woke from the coma. His house-elf had apparently decided to follow his goddaughter instead. “If you think we should move to the countryside, hell, let’s move to the countryside – but don’t you think I’m going to let you shut me out just because some tripe that nasty little bug Skeeter is spreading.”

Sirius turned away from her, unable to bear her looking at him so earnestly. He was  _ family _ and he had to be happy with that, and he was, but something about it still rankled, left him unsatisfied and unhappy with the status quo. 

“I  _ am  _ a cripple, though,” he said roughly, shaking his cane for emphasis. “Not of much use for anything, really, anymore.”

“Hey now, don’t you talk about my godfather like that!” She startled him when she put her hand on his shoulder, Sirius not having heard her come up behind him. “And besides, if nothing else you’re really useful for babysitting this lug,” she continued, nodding to indicate Teddy, and Sirius couldn’t help but laugh at her gentle ribbing.

“I love you, you know that?” he said, looking at her. If he hadn’t been, he never would’ve noticed the way her eyes widened, the slight stutter to her next breath.

“I… love you, too,” she said, the words weirdly spaced. If it hadn’t been for the limp, the cane and his total lack of knowledge of where the Dursley’s lived, he would’ve chased them down and done things to actually warrant a stay in Azkaban. No one should react like that to being told they’re loved.

***

Heather dropped another piece of sugar in the teacup, restlessly stirring it in. Considering how much sugar she’d put in it might very well be undrinkable, and quite probably stone cold since she’d been stirring it ever since the cup had been set down in front of her. 

She’d left Teddy with Sirius and then hurried on her way to the café, hoping that she would arrive early enough to get the worst of the breakdown out of the way before Hermione arrived. The breakdown had been rather more substantial than Heather had expected, however, so she was far from done with it when Hermione dropped into the seat opposite hers.

“Well, for once it looks like I’m the calm and unfrazzled one of us,” Hermione said matter-of-factly, studying Heather over clasped hands. “What’s wrong, Hetty?”

“Can we- could we wait until Ginny comes, do you think?” Heather said, still compulsively stirring her tea, even if she’d stopped adding sugar cubes. She almost jumped out of her skin when someone cleared their throat behind her, calming slightly when Ginny settled into the seat next to Hermione.

“Well, I’m here, so I think we could just about begin?” Ginny grinned cheekily at Heather, who could only manage a weak grimace in return. 

“Food, let’s order food first, yes?” Heather was aware she was stalling, and she knew the other two knew as well. Nevertheless, she waved at a waitress who quickly took their orders and then left Heather to face the sharks, sharks who could smell the blood of emotional vulnerability for fifty miles. The grins they both aimed at Heather  _ was _ distinctly sharkish, too, which only made her more nervous. “Yes, well, I was going to – I wanted to talk to you, the both of you.”

Heather fell silent, stirring another piece of sugar into the tea she absolutely wouldn’t drink, Ginny and Hermione levelling looks at her, her hands and her tea. She was more than grateful when the waitress dropped off their plates, something she had a feeling said waitress noticed going by the weirded out gazes she kept throwing their table.

“Well.” Heather took a deep breath and a fortifying sip of ice-cold, absolutely disgusting tea, swallowing it only by force of will. “Well, I’ve had a revelation, that’s what I’ve had.”

“Yeah, you mentioned in the note you sent,” Ginny interjected, tapping her fingers on the tabletop. She’d already made decent headway into her plate of food, unlike both Heather and Hermione, but then again she was the only professional athlete of the group. “Now, stop stalling, and tell us what this ‘revelation’ of yours was.”

“I seem to be – well, that is,” she stuttered, looking anywhere but at her friends. “I’m in love with Sirius.”

Heather continued fiddling, folding her napkin, stirring her tea, anything to be able to avoid looking at either of them. 

“Okay,” Hermione finally said, sounding more confused than incensed, which Heather opted to take as a good sign. “Do you mean to tell me you haven’t known about that until now?”

“What do you mean,  _ until now _ ?”

“Hetty, darling. You’ve been in love with Sirius forever, sorry to break it to you,” Ginny said, looking compassionately at Heather. “I did think you knew, and just didn’t bring it up, or I would have told you ages ago.”

“And to think, all these years I’ve been saying  _ Ron _ is the one with the emotional capacity of a teaspoon…” Hermione said, shaking her head in despair. “Hetty, I love you dearly, so I didn’t think I’d have to inform you of your crushes.”

Heather looked at her two friends in turn, mentally running through the past years; the time spent reading or just sitting at Sirius’s bedside, nursing him back to health after St Mungo’s, the limping dances on the kitchen floor done just for fun…

“Oh dear Merlin, I’m such an idiot,” she finally exclaimed, burying her face in her hands.

“Yeah, yeah you are,” Ginny said kindly, taking a sip of the latte she’d ordered as complicated as possible just to make Hermione roll her eyes at the pretentiousness. “So what are you going to do about it?”

Heather looked at her despairingly, even as she saw, in the corner of her eye, Hermione break down in hysterics. 

Heather wasn’t sure what it meant, that she was going to take romantic advice for seducing her godfather from her former girlfriend, but she thought it might mean there were no hard feelings.

***

Sirius was once again lurking in a doorway, something he was spending an alarming amount of time doing. It gave him leave to watch Heather, of course, with the added drawback of making him feel even more like a lecherous old man – as if it wasn’t enough that he was in love with his goddaughter, he kept creeping on her from the shadows, too.

She was dancing with Teddy, twirling in place on the Persian rug of the blue parlour, her husky chuckles joined by the child’s peals of delighted laughter. He ached with how much he loved her, ached even more with the knowledge she couldn’t be allowed to know that.

“Sirius!” Heather suddenly exclaimed, coming to a stop that left Teddy looking slightly dizzy. She carefully set him down on his feet, the toddler wobbling a moment before finding his balance. “I didn’t see you there!”

She swept her long hair out of her face, cheeks red from laughing, and for a moment he was so struck dumb he couldn’t move, her beauty overwhelming him.

“Bad day?” she asked sympathetically when he didn’t answer, hurrying over to help him. Sirius didn’t actually need help, that day one in a long line of good days where he barely even needed his cane, but when Heather grasped his arm he couldn’t find it in his selfish heart to say so. She helped him limp over to the wingbacked chair by the window, handily sidestepping where Teddy was playing with his blocks, the child smiling gummily up at them when they passed him.

“I am very grateful, you know, for all your help,” Sirius said as Heather got him settled in the chair, and he couldn’t help but regret it when she let go of him, her warmth retreating. “You don’t have to help me, you know.”

“Well…” she said, hesitating, before visibly straightening, lifting her chin and raising her eyes to his. “I love you, so it’s no hardship. I help you because I want to, not out of some kind of twisted obligation.”

“I love you too, but I’m just saying – if you want to, to go out and live your life without your poor old godfather hanging over your head, well, I mean, I don’t want to stop you, you know.” He knew he was rehashing old arguments, and it took an inhuman amount of effort to not let on how much he hated the idea of her leaving him, but he loved her. He knew this couldn’t be the kind of life she’d wanted for herself.

“No, Sirius,” Heather replied, shaking her head. Her tone was fond, but her face and bearing were deadly serious. If the moment hadn’t felt so charged, he’d have snorted, serious puns still able to fill him with childish amusement. “I  _ love _ you. I don’t want to go out and ‘live my life’, or find someone to date – that’s what you meant, isn’t it, I need to find a partner so I’m not alone forever? – but I can’t do that. I love you, have been in love with you for so long I don’t know who I am when not loving you. Everything I’ve done in the past years, everything I did during the war, I did it filled with love for  _ you _ .”

“I…” Sirius stuttered, eyes going wide. Whatever he had expected, he hadn’t expected that. “I’m your godfather, Heather, and I…” 

Heather straightened further, back going ramrod straight, and when her eyes filled with tears he felt like a cad. He couldn’t say anything to her, he couldn’t encourage this crush of hers – he was her godfather, twenty years her senior, and crippled to boot. He didn’t have anything to offer her. It was better this way.

“You don’t feel the same. Of course. I just needed you to know.” She nodded decisively, picking Teddy up before sweeping out of the room, her back still painfully ramrod straight. 

Sirius leant back in his chair, scrubbed his hands over his face, still trying to convince himself it was all for the best. 

*** 

Heather cooked. She always did when upset, or stressed, or whenever she needed to think. It had been a hated chore when she lived with the Dursleys but had turned into a way of comforting both herself and others as she grew older. She had a strong feeling it was all down to Mrs Weasley’s influence.

She’d put Teddy down for the night, absently reading him a story, before descending into the basement kitchen for a spot of therapy cooking. She was caught in the throes of heartbreak, so she felt it was an entirely valid way of comforting herself, cooking stew in the middle of the night.

She stiffened when she heard the tapping of Sirius descending the steps into the kitchen. She could feel how he hesitated, hovering on the threshold, and she felt it quite an apt simile for the mood in the house. 

“I do want a house in the countryside – or the seaside, maybe – with a little garden, a paved path leading from the gate in the stone wall to the blue front door.” She’d always been incapable of keeping quiet, especially in the face of tension so thick it could be cut with a knife, and this time was no different. She let her shoulders slump, looking down on the chopping board. “I want it all, I want to raise Teddy there, but I only want it with you. You’re my godfather, yes, and maybe my parents wouldn’t approve, but I think they’d want me to be happy above all – and I wouldn’t be happy with anyone but you.”

Heather heard two tentative taps, the sound of Sirius taking two slow, careful steps closer to her. She didn’t turn to look at him, knowing she couldn’t ever say what she felt if she looked at him. 

“I want to raise Teddy with you, and I’d love nothing more than to raise a few  _ more _ children with you, too. A child with your hair and my eyes, a boy named Remus or a girl called Lily… I am  _ in love _ with you, Sirius, and nothing – not even what my parents may or may not think about it – will make me stop loving you.”

“Could you please look at me?” Sirius said, voice low. She tensed, steeling herself, before turning around.

He was much closer than she’d expected, stormy grey eyes looking searchingly at her. This close it struck her just how beautiful he was, and she couldn’t help but go slightly weak in the knees, a state that wasn’t helped by him lifting his hand to her face, fingers buried in her hair and thumb stroking over her cheekbone.

“James may hate me for corrupting his little girl,” Sirius mumbled, gaze searching hers. “But I’ve denied myself happiness before, and if I know anything, it’s that life is too short to deny love. I love you too, Heather, and while I do think you deserve so much better than me, well, if you want to take a chance… I’ll love you ‘til the end of time.”

If she wasn’t swooning after he’d finished talking, she certainly was when he kissed her, a deep, possessive kiss that left her gasping for air and grasping at his shoulders.

*** 

It wasn’t always easy, but the first time Teddy called Sirius ‘dad’, the first time they opened the door to their little cottage on the seaside, every time Heather had looked at Sirius and told him they needed to find another set of godparents – those times made all the difficult times worth it.


End file.
